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GUBU

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                   It is 1822 and Thomas Marks has the iron hook which replaced one of his hands tight on the neck of Catherine Hanrahan, a young pregnant woman.  Marks is a one of six bailiffs, send to collect money by seizing property towards securing rent owed to the Kilkenny/Waterford landlord Pierce Forristal by Hanrahan's father Thomas Power. Marks had collared Hanrahan after she and two other women tried to usher the family's pigs to safety. She breaks free of his grip and makes a run for it. Marks calmly puts one foot on a stone, rests his pistol on his knee and shoots her in the back . She dies in agony six days later.  The RIC, newly constituted, has been spreading terror in the general area and there is not much reason to be confident that any agent of the powerful will be adequately punished in court. Another bailiff William Cooney testifies that Hanrahan struck Marks two or three times with a wattle and called, as ...